National Geographic's "Evacuate Earth"

On 6/25/14 9:02 AM, ERandall e.randalln@... [spacesettlers] wrote:

> Besides station-keeping for regular orbital deviations, if we want our
> hab to have more than one generation's worth of advancement (not just
> stagnant usage), we have to anticipate everything from visits by
> extra-terrestrial items (Chelyabinsk?), earth-based adversaries, decades
> and decades of lethal motes of trash, etc. We may not have to just
> maintain the same orbit, we may have to change orbits without help from
> ground (they might even be the reason for the paranoia).

True. Though any spacefaring civilization is going to have lots of
spaceships around, including cargo ships, passenger ships, tugs, etc...
so for occasional needs, I wonder if it would make more sense to have
some of these ships clamp on and thrust together for a while, rather
than have small engines permanently installed on the hab.

Of course you would have to have safe places for such ships to clamp on,
and they would all have to coordinate their firing (probably under
direct central control). But this seems doable to me.

> Another enhancement to the HF program: I would love to explore
> counter-rotating sections.

Oh yeah, I think we'll get that when we add rotating bearings in v0.04.
Counter-rotating sections are an important feature -- they let you
spin up (or despin) your habitat without expending propellant, for
example, and make it possible to change your colony axis, since your net
angular momentum is zero. So if, for example, your lighting design
requires you to keep one axis pointed at the sun, then counter-rotating
sections will be pretty much required.

Cheers,
- Joe